Raymond Alexander Kukkee asked: Red, is it generally a bad idea to just run with a story line as the muse dictates regardless of timeline?

I had a voracious reader tell me (yesterday) that it makes no difference unless it’s a ‘went here, then there, then there, traveling east’ type of story. Did you run into that problem with KUS ? Do you think it’s better to write everything in continuity?

A

That depends on the story. I am writing about this in my new series on M3. Timeline is necessary for most stories because it keeps the reader headed toward a goal with a familiar line to hold onto along the way.

With KUS, the timeline was important to a large degree because events were cumulative. (You could not do this until you had done that.) This is true until there are two paths to take where you explore both paths. Then, you must be careful to return to the fork before your reader forgets where it was.

I believe without continuity the story does not exist as anything except notes. If it is a collection of isolated events without a theme tying them together, it is not a story. Do note, continuity and timeline are not always the same thing.